Bennett 
Frank  Swinnerton 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

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n-i^z . 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

Personal     Sketches 


BY   FRANK   SWINNERTON 

September 

Shops  and  Houses 

Nocturne 

The  Chaste  Wife 

On  the  Staircase 

The  Happy  Family 

george  h.  doran  company 


J. 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arcliive 

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http://www.arcliive.org/details/frankswinnertonOObenniala 


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RJ.  SWAN,  1919. 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

Personal  Sketches 
h 

»ARI^OLD  BENNETT 

H.  G.  WELLS 
GRANT  M.  OVERTON 


Together  with  Notes 

and  Comments  on  the  Novels  of 

Frank  Swinnerton 


NEW  Xajr    YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


>i 


Copyright,  1920 
George  H.  Doran  Company 


FRANK    SWINNERTON        ccie^. 

Library 

A  Personal  Sketch  P/? 

By  ARNOLD  BENNETT  ^<^7Zi^ 

THERE  was  nothing  in  the  slightest  de- 
gree romantic  or  marvellous  in  my  first 
meeting  with  Frank  Swinnerton.  It  all  hap- 
pened in  the  most  ordinary  way.  One  day, 
perhaps  eight  or  nine  years  ago,  I  received 
a  novel  entitled  The  Casement.  I  was  then 
living  in  a  very  mediaeval  pavilion  in  an  old 
quarter  of  Paris.    I  remember  quite  well  that 

^    an  American  friend  came  for  Christmas  Eve 
^       .  .        . 

♦4    dinner  in  this  fastness  or  fortress.     I  had  a 

>^    new  and  wondrous  coffee-machine  of  which  I 

^    was  proud,  and  in  which  I  made  the  coffee 

V   with  my  own  hands.     On  that  night  I  put  the 

^V^round  coffee  in  the  wrong  end  of  the  ma- 

«    chine,  with  the  result  that  finally  the  precious 

^    liquid  inundated  the  whole  of  the  sideboard 

^    instead  of  reaching  the  cups;  also  the  mediae- 

\^  val  oil-lamps  were  left  with  the  wicks  too 

S,     high  in  the  drawing-room,  so  that  when  we 

^  returned  to  the  drawing-room  after  mopping 

up  the  coffee,  every  object  therein  was  evenly 

qovered  with  a  coat  of  greasy  black  soot,  and 


[  5  ] 


373995 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

the  opaque  atmosphere  scorched  the  eyes  and 
parched  the  throat. 

To  return  to  The  Casement.  The  book 
was  accompanied  by  a  short,  rather  curt  note 
from  the  author,  Frank  Swinnerton,  politely 
indicating  that  if  I  cared  to  read  it  he  would 
be  glad,  and  Implying  that  if  I  didn't  care  to 
read  it,  he  should  endeavor  still  to  survive.  I 
would  quote  the  letter,  but  I  cannot  find  it — 
no  doubt  for  the  reason  that  all  my  corre- 
spondence is  carefully  filed  on  the  most  mod- 
ern filing  system.  I  did  not  read  The  Case- 
ment for  a  long  time.  Why  should  I  conse- 
crate three  irrecoverable  hours  or  so  to  the 
work  of  a  man  as  to  whom  I  had  no  creden- 
tials? Why  should  I  thus  introduce  foreign 
matter  into  the  delicate  cogwheels  of  my 
programme  of  reading?  However,  after  a 
delay  of  weeks,  heaven  in  its  deep  wisdom 
inspired  me  with  a  caprice  to  pick  up  the 
volume. 

I  had  read,  without  fatigue  but  on  the 
other  hand  without  passionate  eagerness, 
about  a  hundred  pages  before  the  thought 
suddenly  occurred  to  me:  "I  do  not  remem- 
ber having  yet  come  across  one  single  ready- 
made  phrase  in  this  story."     Such  was  my 

[  6  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

first  definable  thought  concerning  Frank 
Swinnerton.  I  hate  ready-made  phrases, 
which  in  my  view — and  in  that  of  Schopen- 
hauer— are  the  sure  mark  of  a  mediocre 
writer.  I  began  to  be  interested.  I  soon  said 
to  myself:  "This  fellow  has  a  distinguished 
style."  I  then  perceived  that  the  character- 
drawing  was  both  subtle  and  original,  the 
atmosphere  delicious,  and  the  movement  of 
the  tale  very  original,  too.  The  novel  stirred 
me — not  by  its  powerfulness,  for  it  did  not 
set  out  to  be  powerful — but  by  its  individual- 
ity and  distinction.  I  thereupon  wrote  to 
Frank  Swinnerton.  I  forget  entirely  what  I 
said.  But  I  know  that  I  decided  that  I  must 
meet  him. 

When  I  came  to  London,  considerably 
later,  I  took  measures  to  meet  him,  at  the 
Authors'  Club.  He  proved  to  be  young;  I 
daresay  twenty-four  or  twenty-five — medium 
height,  medium  looks,  medium  clothes,  some- 
what reddish  hair,  and  lively  eyes.  If  I  had 
seen  him  in  a  motorbus  I  should  never  have 
said:  "A  remarkable  chap," — no  more  than 
if  I  had  seen  myself  in  a  motorbus.  My  im- 
pressions of  the  interview  were  rather  like 
my  impressions  of  the  book;  at  first  some- 

[  7  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

what  negative,  and  only  very  slowly  becoming 
positive.  He  was  reserved,  as  became  a 
young  author;  I  was  reserved,  as  became  an 
older  author;  we  were  both  reserved,  as  be- 
came Englishmen.  Our  views  on  the  only 
important  thing  in  the  world — that  is  to  say, 
fiction — agreed,  not  completely,  but  in  the 
main;  it  would  never  have  done  for  us  to 
agree  completely.  I  was  as  much  pleased  by 
what  he  didn't  say  as  by  what  he  said;  quite 
as  much  by  the  indications  of  the  stock  inside 
the  shop  as  by  the  display  in  the  window. 
The  interview  came  to  a  calm  close.  My 
knowledge  of  him  acquired  from  it  amounted 
to  this,  that  he  held  decided  and  righteous 
views  upon  literature,  that  his  heart  was  not 
on  his  sleeve,  and  that  he  worked  in  a  pub- 
lisher's office  during  the  day  and  wrote  for 
himself  in  the  evenings. 

Then  I  saw  no  more  of  Swinnerton  for  a 
relatively  long  period.  I  read  other  books  of 
his.  I  read  The  Young  Idea,  and  The  Happy 
Family,  and,  I  think,  his  critical  work  on 
George  Gissing.  The  Happy  Family  marked 
a  new  stage  in  his  development.  It  has  some 
really  piquant  scenes,  and  it  revealed  that 
minute  knowledge  of  middle-class  life  in  the 

[  8  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

nearer  suburbs  of  London,  and  that  disturb- 
ing insight  into  the  hearts  and  brains  of  quite 
unfashionable  girls,  which  are  two  of  his  prin- 
cipal gifts.  I  read  a  sketch  of  his  of  a  com- 
monplace crowd  walking  round  a  bandstand 
which  brought  me  to  a  real  decision  as  to  his 
qualities.  The  thing  was  like  life,  and  it  was 
bathed  in  poetry. 

Our  acquaintance  proceeded  slowly,  and  I 
must  be  allowed  to  assert  that  the  initiative 
which  pushed  it  forward  was  mine.  It  made 
a  jump  when  he  spent  a  week-end  in  the 
Thames  Estuary  on  my  yacht.  If  any  reader 
has  a  curiosity  to  know  what  my  yacht  is  not 
like,  he  should  read  the  striking  yacht  chap- 
ter in  Nocturne.  I  am  convinced  that  Swin- 
nerton  evolved  the  yacht  in  Nocturne  from 
my  yacht;  but  he  ennobled,  magnified,  deco- 
rated, enriched  and  bejewelled  it  till  honestly 
I  could  not  recognize  my  wretched  vessel. 
The  yacht  in  Nocturne  is  the  yacht  I  want, 
ought  to  have,  and  never  shall  have.  I  envy 
him  the  yacht  in  Nocturne,  and  my  envy  takes 
a  malicious  pleasure  in  pointing  out  a  mistake 
in  the  glowing  scene.  He  anchors  his  yacht 
in  the  middle  of  the  Thames — as  If  the  ty- 
rannic  authorities  of  the   Port  of  London 

[  9  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

would  ever  allow  a  yacht,  or  any  other  craft, 
to  anchor  in  midstream ! 

After  the  brief  cruise  our  friendship  grew 
rapidly.  I  now  know  Swinnerton — probably 
as  well  as  any  man  Icnows  him;  I  have  pene- 
trated into  the  interior  of  the  shop.  He  has 
done  several  things  since  I  first  knew  him — 
rounded  the  corner  of  thirty,  grown  a  beard, 
under  the  orders  of  a  doctor,  and  physically 
matured.  Indeed  he  looks  decidedly  stronger 
than  in  fact  he  is — he  was  never  able  to 
pass  the  medical  examination  for  the  army. 
He  is  still  in  the  business  of  publishing,  being 
one  of  the  principal  personages  in  the  ancient 
and  well-tried  firm  of  Chatto  and  Windus, 
the  English  publishers  of  Swinburne  and 
Mark  Twain.  He  reads  manuscripts,  includ- 
ing his  own — and  including  mine.  He  re- 
fuses manuscripts,  though  he  did  accept  one 
of  mine.  He  tells  authors  what  they  ought 
to  do  and  ought  not  to  do.  He  is  marvellously 
and  terribly  particular  ajid  fussy  about  the 
format  of  the  books  issued  by  his  firm.  Ques- 
tions as  to  fonts  of  type,  width  of  margins, 
disposition  of  title-pages,  tint  and  texture  of 
bindings  really  do  interest  him.  And  mis- 
prints— especially  when  he  has  read  the 
proofs  himself — give  him  neuralgia  and  even 

[   10  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

worse  afflictions.    Indeed  he  is  the  ideal  pub- 
lisher for  an  author. 

Nevertheless,  publishing  is  only  a  side-line 
of  his.  He  still  writes  for  himself  in  the 
evenings  and  at  week-ends — the  office  never 
sees  him  on  Saturdays.  Among  the  chief 
literary  events  of  nineteen  seventeen  was 
Nocturne,  which  he  wrote  in  the  evenings 
and  at  week-ends.  It  is  a  short  book,  but  the 
time  in  which  he  wrote  it  was  even  shorter. 
He  had  scarcely  begun  it  when  it  was  finished. 
In  regard  to  the  result  I  am  prepared  to  say 
to  the  judicious  reader  unacquainted  with 
Swinnerton's  work,  "Read  Nocturne'\ — and 
to  stand  or  fall,  and  to  let  him  stand  or  fall, 
by  the  result.  Nocturne  moved  H.  G.  Wells 
to  an  extraordinary  enthusiasm,  so  much  so 
that  Wells  had  to  write  to  the  morning 
papers  about  it.  And  I  remember  Wells  say- 
ing to  me :  "You  know,  Arnold,  he  achieves 
a  perfection  in  Nocturne  that  you  and  I  never 
get  within  streets  of."  A  hard  saying  to  pass 
between  two  hardened  pilgrims  whose  com- 
bined years  total  over  a  century;  but  justified. 
You  can  say  what  you  like  about  Nocturne, 
but  you  cannot  say  that  on  its  own  scale  it  is 


[  11  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

not  perfect,  consummate.     At  least,  I  can- 
not. 

Besides  being  no  mean  publisher  and  a 
novelist  who  has  produced  several  fine  and 
one  perfect  novel,  Frank  Swinnerton  has 
other  gifts.  He  is  a  surpassingly  good  racon- 
teur. By  which  I  do  not  signify  that  the  man 
who  meets  Swinnerton  for  the  first,  second  or 
third  time  will  infallibly  ache  with  laughter 
at  his  remarks.  Swinnerton  only  blossoms 
in  the  right  atmosphere;  he  must  know  ex- 
actly where  he  is;  he  must  be  perfectly  sure 
of  his  environment,  before  the  flower  un- 
closes. And  he  merely  relates  what  he  has 
seen,  what  he  has  taken  part  in.  The  narra- 
tions would  be  naught  if  he  were  not  the  nar- 
rator. His  effects  are  helped  by  the  fact  that 
he  is  an  excellent  mimic  and  by  his  utter  real- 
istic mercilessness.  But  like  all  first-class 
realists  he  is  also  a  romantic,  and  in  his  mer- 
cilessness there  is  a  mysterious  touch  of  fund- 
amental benevolence — as  befits  the  attitude 
of  one  who  does  not  worry  because  human 
nature  is  not  something  different  from  what 
it  actually  is.  Lastly,  in  this  connection,  he 
has  superlatively  the  laugh  known  as  the  "in- 
fectious laugh."    When  he  laughs  everybody 

[  12  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

laughs,  everybody  has  to  laugh.  There  are 
men  who  tell  side-splitting  tales  with  the  face 
of  an  undertaker — for  example,  Irvin  Cobb. 
There  are  men  who  tell  side-splitting  tales 
and  openly  and  candidly  rollick  in  them  from 
the  first  word;  and  of  these  latter  is  Frank 
Swinnerton.  But  Frank  Swinnerton  can  be 
more  cruel  than  Irvin  Cobb.  Indeed,  some- 
times, when  he  is  telling  a  story,  his  face  be- 
comes exactly  like  the  face  of  Mephistoph- 
eles  in  excellent  humour  with  the  world's  sin- 
fulness and  idiocy. 

Swinnerton's  other  gift  is  the  critical.  It 
has  been  said  that  an  author  cannot  be  at  once 
a  first-class  critic  and  a  first-class  creative  art- 
ist. To  which  absurdity  I  reply:  What 
about  William  Dean  Howells?  And  what 
about  Henry  James,  to  name  no  other  names  ? 
Anyhow,  if  Swinnerton  excels  in  fiction  he 
also  excels  in  literary  criticism.  The  fact  that 
the  literary  editor  of  The  Manchester  Guard- 
ian wrote  and  asked  him  to  write  literary 
criticism  for  The  Manchester  Guardian  will 
perhaps  convey  nothing  to  the  American  citi- 
zen. But  to  the  Englishman  of  literary  taste 
and  experience  it  has  enormous  import.  The 
Manchester  Guardian  publishes  the  most  fas- 

[  13  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

tidious    and    judicious    literary    criticism    in 
Britain. 

I  recall  that  once  when  Swinnerton  was  in 
my  house  I  had  there  also  a  young  military 
officer  with  a  mad  passion  for  letters  and  a 
terrific  ambition  to  be  an  author.  The  offi- 
cer gave  me  a  manuscript  to  read.  I  handed 
it  over  to  Swinnerton  to  read,  and  then  called 
upon  Swinnerton  to  criticize  it  in  the  presence 
of  both  of  us.  "Your  friend  is  very  kind," 
said  the  officer  to  me  afterwards,  "but  it  was 
a  frightful  ordeal." 

The  book  on  George  Gissing  1  have  al- 
ready mentioned.  But  it  was  Swinnerton's 
work  on  R.  L.  Stevenson  that  made  the 
trouble  in  London.  It  is  a  destructive  work. 
It  is  very  bland  and  impartial,  and  not  bereft 
of  laudatory  passages,  but  since  its  appear- 
ance Stevenson's  reputation  has  never  been 
the  same.  Those  who  wish  to  preserve  their 
illusions  about  the  greatness  of  Stevenson 
should  refrain  from  reading  it.  Few  recent 
books  of  criticism  have  aroused  more  hostility 
than  Swinnerton's  Stevenson.  There  is  a  pow- 
erful Stevenson  cult  in  England,  as  there  is  in 
America.  And  in  London  there  are  sundry 
persons  who  cannot  get  far  into  any  conver- 

[  14  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

satlon  without  using  the  phrase,  "As  dear  old 
R.  L.  S.  used  to  say."  Some  of  these  persons 
are  personages.  They  rage  at  the  mention 
of  Swinnerton.  One  of  them  on  a  celebrated 
occasion  exclaimed  in  fury:  "Never  let  me 
hear  that  man's  name !"  This  detail  alone 
shows  that  Swinnerton  is  a  real  critic.  Sham 
criticism,  however  violent, — and  Swinnerton 
is  incapable  of  violence — does  not  and  can- 
not arouse  such  passion. 


[  15  ] 


CONCERNING  MR.  SWINNERTON 
By  H.  G.  WELLS 

"But  do  I  see  afore  me,  him  as  I  ever  sported  with 
in  his  time  of  happy  infancy?    And  may  I — may  I?" 
This  May  I,  meant  might  he  shake  hands? 

— Dickens,   Great  Expectations. 

I  DO  not  know  why  I  should  be  so  overpower- 
ingly  reminded  of  the  immortal,  if  at  times  im- 
possible, Uncle  Pumblechook,  when  I  sit  down  to 
write  a  short  preface  to  Mr.  Swinnerton's  Nocturne. 
Jests  come  at  times  out  of  the  backwoods  of  a 
writer's  mind.  It  is  part  of  the  literary  quality 
that  behind  the  writer  there  is  a  sub-writer,  making 
a  commentary.  This  is  a  comment  against  which 
I  may  reasonably  expostulate,  but  which,  neverthe- 
less, I  am  indisposed  to  ignore. 

The  task  of  introducing  a  dissimilar  writer  to  a 
new  public  has  its  own  peculiar  difficulties  for  the 
elder  hand.  I  suppose  logically  a  writer  should 
have  good  words  only  for  his  own  imitators.  For 
surely  he  has  chosen  what  he  considers  to  be  the 
best  ways.  What  justification  has  he  for  praising 
attitudes  he  never  adopted  and  commending  meth- 
ods of  treatment  from  which  he  has  abstained  ?  The 
reader  naturally  receives  his  commendations  with 
suspicion.  Is  this  man,  he  asks,  stricken  with  peni- 
tence in  the  flower  of  his  middle-age?  Has  he  but 
just  discovered  how  good  are  the  results  that  the 
other  game,   the  game  he  has  never  played,   can 


[  17  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

give?  Or  has  he  been  disconcerted  by  the  criticism 
of  the  Young?  The  fear  of  the  Young  is  the  be- 
ginning of  his  wisdom.  Is  he  taking  this  alien-spir- 
ited work  by  the  hand  simply  to  say  defensively  and 
vainly,  "I  assure  you,  indeed,  I  am  not  an  old 
fogy;  I  quite  understand  it."  (There  it  is,  I  fancy, 
that  the  Pumblechook  quotation  creeps  in.)  To  all 
of  which  suspicions,  enquiries  and  objections,  I  will 
quote,  tritely  but  conclusively,  "In  my  Father's 
house  are  many  mansions,"  or  in  the  words  of  Mr. 
Kipling: 

There  are  five  and  forty  ways 

Of  composing  tribal  lays, 

And  every  blessed  one  of  them  is  right. 

Indeed,  now  that  I  come  to  think  it  over,  I  have 
never  in  all  my  life  read  a  writer  of  closely  kindred 
method  to  my  own  that  I  have  greatly  admired; 
the  confessed  imitators  give  me  all  the  discomfort 
without  the  relieving  admission  of  caricature;  the 
parallel  instances  I  have  always  wanted  to  rewrite; 
while  on  the  other  hand  for  many  totally  dissimilar 
workers  I  have  had  quite  involuntary  admirations. 
It  is  not  merely  that  I  do  not  so  clearly  see  how 
they  are  doing  it,  though  that  may  certainly  be  a 
help;  it  is  far  more  a  matter  of  taste.  As  a  writer 
I  belong  to  one  school  and  as  a  reader  to  another — 
as  a  man  may  like  to  make  optical  instruments  and 
collect    old    china.      Swift,    Sterne,    Jane    Austen, 


[  18  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

Thackeray,  and  the  Dickens  of  Bleak  House  were 
the  idols  of  my  youthful  imitation,  but  the  con- 
temporaries of  my  early  praises  were  Joseph  Con- 
rad, W.  H.  Hudson,  and  Stephen  Crane,  all  utterly 
remote  from  that  English  tradition. 

This  much  may  sound  egotistical,  and  the  impa- 
tient reader  may  ask  when  I  am  coming  to  Mr. 
Swinnerton,  to  which  the  only  possible  answer  is 
that  I  am  coming  to  Mr.  Swinnerton  as  fast  as  I 
can  and  that  all  this  leads  as  straightly  as  possible 
to  a  definition  of  Mr.  Swinnerton's  position.  The 
science  of  criticism  is  still  crude  in  its  classification, 
there  are  a  multitude  of  different  things  being  done 
that  are  all  lumped  together  heavily  as  novels,  they 
are  novels  as  distinguished  from  romances,  so  long 
as  they  are  dealing  with  something  understood  to 
be  real.  All  that  they  have  in  common  beyond  that 
is  that  they  agree  in  exhibiting  a  sort  of  story  con- 
tinuum. But  some  of  us  are  trying  to  use  that  story 
continuum  to  present  ideas  in  action,  others  to  pro- 
duce powerful  excitements  of  this  sort  or  that,  while 
again  others  concentrate  upon  the  giving  of  life  as 
it  is,  seen  only  more  intensely.  Personally  I  have 
no  use  at  all  for  life  as  it  is  except  as  raw  material. 
It  bores  me  to  look  at  things  unless  there  is  also  the 
idea  of  doing  something  with  them.  I  should  find 
a  holiday,  doing  nothing  amid  beautiful  scenery,  not 


[   19  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

a  holiday,  but  a  torture.  The  contemplative  ecstasy 
of  the  saints  would  be  hell  to  me.  In  the — I  forget 
exactly  how  many — books  I  have  written,  it  is  al- 
ways about  life  being  altered  I  write,  or  about 
people  developing  schemes  for  altering  life.  And  I 
have  never  once  "presented"  life.  My  apparently 
most  objective  books  are  criticisms  and  incitements 
to  change.  Such  a  writer  as  Mr.  Swinnerton,  on 
the  contrary,  sees  life  and  renders  it  with  a  steadi- 
ness and  detachment  and  patience  quite  foreign  to 
my  disposition.  He  has  no  underlying  motive.  He 
sees  and  tells.  His  aim  is  the  attainment  of  that 
beauty  which  comes  with  exquisite  presentation. 
Seen  through  his  art,  life  is  seen  as  one  sees  things 
through  a  crystal  lens,  more  intensely,  more  com- 
pleted, and  with  less  turbidity.  There  the  business 
begins  and  ends  for  him.  He  does  not  want  you 
or  anyone  to  do  anything. 

Mr.  Swinnerton  is  not  alone  among  recent 
writers  in  this  clear  detached  objectivity.  But  Mr. 
Swinnerton,  like  Mr.  James  Joyce,  does  not  repu- 
diate the  depths  for  the  sake  of  the  surface.  His 
people  are  not  splashes  of  appearance,  but  living 
minds.  Jenny  and  Emmy  in  this  book  are  realities 
inside  and  out;  they  are  imaginative  creatures  so 
complete  that  one  can  think  with  ease  of  Jenny  ten 
years  hence  or  of  Emmy  as  a  baby.  The  fickle  Alf 
is  one  of  the  most  perfect  Cockneys — a  type  so  easy 
to  caricature  and  so  hard  to  get  true — in  fiction. 
If  there  exists  a  better  writing  of  vulgar  lovemaking, 
so  base,  so  honest,  so  touchingly  mean  and  so  touch- 
[  20  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

ingly  full  of  the  craving  for  happiness  than  this,  I 
do  not  know  of  it.  Only  a  novelist  who  has  had 
his  troubles  can  understand  fully  what  a  dance 
among  china  cups,  what  a  skating  over  thin  ice, 
what  a  tight-rope  performance  is  achieved  in  this 
astounding  chapter.  A  false  note,  one  fatal  line, 
would  have  ruined  it  all.  On  the  one  hand  lay 
brutality ;  a  hundred  imitative  louts  could  have  writ- 
ten a  similar  chapter  brutally,  with  the  soul  left 
out,  we  have  loads  of  such  "strong  stuff"  and  it  is 
nothing;  on  the  other  side  was  the  still  more  dread- 
ful fall  into  sentimentality,  the  tear  of  conscious 
tenderness,  the  redeeming  glimpse  of  "better  things" 
in  Alf  or  Emmy  that  could  at  one  stroke  have  con- 
verted their  reality  into  a  genteel  masquerade.  The 
perfection  of  Alf  and  Emmy  is  that  at  no  point 
does  a  "nature's  gentleman"  or  a  "nature's  lady" 
show  through  and  demand  our  refined  sympathy. 
It  is  only  by  comparison  with  this  supreme  conver- 
sation that  the  affair  of  Keith  and  Jenny  seems  to 
fall  short  of  perfection.  But  that  also  is  at  last 
perfected,  I  think,  by  Jenny's  final,  "Keith  .  .  . 
Oh,  Keith!  .  .  ." 

Above  these  four  figures  again  looms  the  majestic 
invention  of  "Pa."  Every  reader  can  appreciate  the 
truth  and  humor  of  Pa,  but  I  doubt  if  anyone  with- 
out technical  experience  can  realize  how  the  atmos- 
phere is  made  and  completed  and  rounded  off  by 
Pa's  beer.   Pa's  meals,   and   Pa's  accident,  how  he 


[  21  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

binds  the  bundle  and  makes  the  whole  thing  one, 
and  what  an  enviable  triumph  his  achievement  is. 

But  the  book  is  before  the  reader  and  I  will  not 
enlarge  upon  its  merits  further.  Mr,  Swinnerton 
has  written  four  or  five  other  novels  before  this  one, 
but  none  of  them  compares  with  it  in  quality.  His 
earlier  books  were  strongly  influenced  by  the  work 
of  George  Gissing;  they  have  something  of  the 
same  fatigued  grayness  of  texture  and  little  of  the 
same  artistic  completeness  and  intense  vision  of 
Nocturne.  He  has  also  made  two  admirable  and 
very  shrewd  and  thorough  studies  of  the  work  and 
lives  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  and  George  Gis- 
sing. Like  these  two,  he  has  had  great  experience 
of  illness.  He  is  a  young  man  of  so  slender  a 
health,  so  frequently  ill,  that  even  for  the  most 
sedentary  purposes  of  this  war,  his  country  would 
not  take  him.  It  was  in  connection  with  his  Gissing 
volume,  for  which  I  possessed  some  material  he 
needed,  that  I  first  made  his  acquaintance.  He  has 
had  something  of  Gissing's  restricted  and  gray  ex- 
periences, but  he  has  nothing  of  Gissing's  almost 
perverse  gloom  and  despondency.  Indeed  he  is  as 
gay  a  companion  as  he  is  fragile.  He  is  a  twinkling 
addition  to  any  Christmas  party,  and  the  twinkle  is 
here  in  the  style.  And  having  sported  with  him  "in 
his  times  of  happy  infancy"  I  had  an  intimate  and 
personal  satisfaction  to  my  pleasant  task  of  saluting 


[  22  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

this  fine  work  that  ends  a  brilliant  apprenticeship 
and  ranks  Mr.  Swinnerton  as  Master. 

This  is  a  book  that  will  not  die.  It  is  perfect, 
authentic,  and  alive.  Whether  a  large  and  imme- 
diate popularity  will  fall  to  it,  I  cannot  say,  but 
certainly  the  discriminating  will  find  it  and  keep  it 
and  keep  it  alive.  If  Mr.  Swinnerton  were  never 
to  write  another  word  I  think  he  might  count  on 
this  much  of  his  work  living,  when  many  of  the 
more  portentous  reputations  of  to-day  may  have 
served  their  purpose  in  the  world  and  become  no 
more  than  fading  names. 


[  2^  ] 


A  CONVERSATION  ABOUT 
FRANK  SWINNERTON 
'       By  p.  M. 

MY  great-aunt  Eunice  put  down  the  book  with 
a  sniff.  "So  that's  the  kind  of  story  young 
people  like  nowadays!"  she  sputtered. 

"Why,  what's  the  matter  with  it  ?"  I  asked,  much 
interested  to  know  the  effect  of  this  entirely  modern 
novel  on  one  whose  standard  had  always  been  loyally 
fixed  on  John  Halifax,  Gentleman. 

"There's  nobody  in  it  you  can  look  up  to,"  she 
complained.  "No  one  stands  out  more  than  anyone 
else.  Now  which  would  you  rather  be  yourself, 
if  you  had  your  choice — Emmy  or  Jenny?" 

"That's  easy,"  I  answered ;  "Jenny,  of  course." 

"Well,  I  wouldn't.  Goodness  knows,  I'd  hate  to 
be  either  of  them;  but  if  I  had  to  choose,  I'd  be 
Emmy.  She  at  least  was  sure  of  a  husband,  even  if 
he  was  only  a  shopkeeper,  and  she  could  look  ahead 
to  a  life  of  security,  whereas  Jenny  gave  up  every- 
thing for  the  sake  of  that  disreputable  sailor,  and 
I'd  take  my  oath  he'd  never  come  back  to  her, 
either." 

"She  had  the  satisfaction  anyway  of  enjoying  one 
glorious  adventure,"  I  defended. 

"I  don't  call  it  a  glorious  adventure.  That's  just 
the  trouble  with  the  story.  In  my  day,  the  novels 
had  characters  who  did  things  and  were  good  and 


[  25  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

noble.  You  could  tell  in  the  first  chapter  whom  to 
admire  and  whom  to  despise.  In  this  story  the 
characters  aren't  like  heroes  and  heroines  in  books. 
They  are  just  like  the  people  you  meet  in  everyday 
life.  It's  not  the  kind  of  pleasure  reading  I'm  used 
to." 

The  book  under  discussion  was  Nocturne,  and  I 
thought  that  my  Aunt  Eunice,  quite  against  her  will, 
had  paid  the  author,  Mr.  Swinnerton,  the  supreme 
compliment.  My  own  estimate  of  the  work  com- 
pletely coincided  with  hers;  but  my  pleasure-pain 
reactions  were  so  exactly  opposite,  after  reading 
Nocturne,  that  I  felt,  instead  of  homesick  longings 
for  Victorian  perfection,  a  surge  of  unrest  to  get 
hold  of  other  books  of  Mr.  Swinnerton's  and  to 
find  out  why  they  seemed  so  different  from  anything 
else  I  had  ever  read. 

I  am  one  of  those  meretricious  readers  who  glide 
rapidly  over  the  pages  of  a  book  and  forget.  I 
forget  titles  and  plots  and,  unless  there  is  something 
very  unusual  indeed  about  the  context,  only  the 
most  leading  conversation  about  the  characters  can 
make  me  remember  having  read  the  book  at  all.  So 
it  was  no  slight  prick  to  my  interest  in  Mr.  Swin- 
nerton when,  having  finished  Nocturne,  I  found 
myself  thinking  quite  warmly  and  vividly  of  another 
book  which  had  strayed  into  my  hands  some  six 
years  before.  This  was  The  Happy  Family.  In 
spite  of  the  fact  that,  at  the  time,  Arnold  Bennett, 


[  26  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

H.  G.  Wells,  May  Sinclair,  Granville  Barker  and 
various  others  were  putting  forth  exhaustive  studies 
of  the  various  strata  of  English  middle  class  family 
life,  this  tale  had  the  faculty  of  simultaneously  arous- 
ing and  satisfying  curiosity  as  none  of  the  other  books 
did.  It  dealt  with  the  life  of  the  London  suburbs 
and  it  depicted  so  ruthlessly  the  discontents  of  this 
unromantic  and  irritating  class  of  people,  whose  sor- 
didness,  vulgarity,  and  aping  snobbishness  are  for- 
ever doing  battle  with  the  fine  idealism,  the  high 
adventurousness  of  its  own  striving  youth — that  even 
my  volatile  gray  matter  retained  the  impression.  I 
asked  all  my  friends  about  the  book.  None  of  them 
had  read  it.  iNone  of  them  had  even  heard  of 
Frank  Swinnerton. 

In  the  lapse  of  six  years,  however,  the  veil  has 
lifted.  Now  it  is  difficult  to  find  a  reader  on  whom 
one  can  flash  the  work  of  Mr.  Swinnerton  as  a 
"discovery."  He  has  many  friends  and  correspond- 
ents on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic.  And  by  pricking 
up  my  ears  when  I  happened  into  "literary  circles," 
by  begging  glimpses  of  his  letters,  and  by  resorting 
to  the  meager  data  furnished  by  publishers,  I  was 
quite  easily  able  to  satisfy  myself  as  to  why  Mr. 
Swinnerton  stands  out  so  sharply  against  the  erotic 
homogeneity  of  the  younger  English  writers.  It  is 
because  he  himself  was  one  of  the  shackled  young 
adventurers  of  the  London  suburbs.  And  the  life 
he  saw  about  him,  petty,  exacting,  devoid  of  dra- 


[  27  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

matics,  was  the  life  he  put  into  his  books.  That  is 
why  Great-aunt  Eunice,  missing  her  heroes  and  her- 
oines, denounced  him,  and  that  is  why  he  seems  to 
me  unique  in  his  craft. 

When  I  say  that  Mr.  Swinnerton  portrayed  the 
life  of  which  he  himself  was  a  product,  I  do  not 
mean  that  his  work  is  in  any  sense  autobiographical. 
Certain  facts  about  himself  naturally,  and  about 
those  with  whom  he  associated,  are  reproduced  ia 
his  books.  "At  fourteen,"  he  writes,  "I  went  to 
work  as  an  office  boy  in  circumstances  similar  to 
those  in  which  Stephen  Moore  {The  Chaste  Wife) 
began.  The  previous  years  had  been  years  of  serious 
illness  and  starvation."  Again  he  says:  "The  char- 
acter of  Amberley,  in  On  the  Staircase,  is  a  sort  of 
semi-self-portrait,  but  gilded  for  purposes  of  fictional 
interest.  The  Happy  Family  enshrines  some  memo- 
ries of  very  early  days  and  gives  some  of  my  pub- 
lishing experience.  On  the  Staircase  holds  this  much 
of  personal  reminiscence  that  the  flat  in  which  the 
Grettons  live  at  the  top  of  the  house  in  Great  James 
Street  is  the  flat  in  which  my  family  lived  for  a 
couple  of  years." 

These,  however,  are  only  incidents,  and  they  are 
relieved  and  illumined,  as  is  all  Mr.  Swinnerton's 
work,  with  imaginative  insight  and  interpretative 
suggestion.  According  to  one  who  knows  him 
well,  "Mr.  Swinnerton  thinks  one  should  not  nar- 
rate literally  the  events  of  one's  own  life  in  writing 


[  28  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

fiction,  and  he  rarely  adopts  suggestions  from  real 
persons  for  his  characters." 

But  those  who  are  curious  about  the  facts  of  the 
author's  life  need  not  dig  out  "the  man  behind  the 
book"  to  find  them.  Mr.  Swinnerton  makes  no 
mystery  of  them  and  they  are  not  such  as  would 
stimulate  sensation  hunters.  His  is  a  story  of  suc- 
cess wrung  from  poverty,  serious  ill  health,  and  un- 
propitious  circumstance.  He  owes  much  to  the  in- 
terest of  the  friends  whom  his  quiet,  rather  baffling 
personality  never  failed  to  win  for  him;  but  more 
he  owes  to  his  own  ordered  will  which  would  al- 
ways concentrate  on  the  good  ahead,  no  matter  how 
distressing  and  upsetting  the  details  of  material  ex- 
istence might  be. 

He  was  born  in  1884,  and  from  the  first  was  up 
against  the  cruelties  of  London  at  its  worst,  but 
always  through  the  sordidness  and  gloom  a  kindly 
star  shone  above  his  head.  During  his  period  as 
office  boy  his  employers,  recognizing  the  serious  am- 
bition of  the  thoughtful  lad,  encouraged  him  to  use 
his  spare  time  to  write.  In  a  few  years,  through 
the  interest  of  a  friend,  he  found  his  way  into  the 
office  of  J.  M.  Dent  and  Company,  the  publishers 
of  the  Temple  Classics  and  the  Everyman  Library. 
Here,  in  the  atmosphere  of  a  scholarly  house,  he 
began  his  first  novel.  This  book,  finished  at  the 
age  of  eighteen,  marks  the  beginning  of  a  career 
which,   though  still  so  young,   falls  naturally   into 


[  29  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

three  periods.  The  first  includes  three  novels  that 
were  never  published ;  the  second  includes  three 
novels  that  were  published  but  not  read;  and  the 
third  includes  a  bevy  of  novels  some  of  which  have 
taken  two  continents  by  the  ears. 

But  the  work  of  the  first  period  was  not  wasted, 
even  though  the  fine  script  of  its  many,  many  hun- 
dred pages  (I  have  seen  a  sample  and  it  is  the  most 
beautiful  handwriting  in  the  world)  was  soon  fed 
to  hungry  flames  by  the  author.  Young  Swinnerton 
was  busy  all  this  time  acquiring  technique,  learning 
how  to  develop  in  sharp  black  and  white  the  im- 
pressions made  on  the  highly  sensitized  film  of  his 
mind.  It  was  a  short  tragedy  written  at  this  time 
that  won  for  him  the  enthusiastic  confidence  of  Mr. 
Philip  Lee  Warner,  who  soon  asked  Swinnerton 
to  be  proof  manager  for  the  firm  of  Chatto  and 
Windus,  in  which  he  was  a  partner.  Spurred  by 
the  congeniality  of  his  work  and  his  surroundings, 
the  young  man  dedicated  his  evenings  to  writing. 
His  first  book,  The  Merry  Heart,  he  bashfully  sub- 
mitted, at  Mr.  Warner's  request,  to  the  house, 
where,  to  avoid  embarrassment,  it  was  sent  to  an 
outside  reader  who  had  no  knowledge  of  the  author. 
Swinnerton  received  the  notice  of  its  acceptance  on 
the  occasion  of  his  twenty-fourth  birthday.  What 
a  birthday  that  was  only  those  who  have  similarly 
striven  can  know.  But  the  young  author  did  not 
celebrate  it  with  champagne.     He  went  to  work  on 


[  30] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

another  story.  The  Young  Idea  won  from  Arnold 
Bennett  the  cryptic  comment  that  Swinnerton  "knew 
his  business  so  well  that  he  didn't  need  anyone  to 
show  him  his  faults."  Followed  The  Casement, 
and  apropos  of  these  three  books  of  the  second 
period,  Floyd  Dell,  the  first  American  critic  to  take 
notice  of  the  young  author,  said  that  Swinnerton 
knew  all  there  was  to  know  about  the  young  girl, 
and  prophesied  that  he  would  do  "bigger  work." 

The  prophecy  was  speedily  fulfilled,  for  the  can- 
vas of  The  Happy  Family  is  as  inclusive  as  the 
suburbs  of  London.  But  the  book  that  won  him 
his  first  real  appreciation  in  literary  England  was 
his  work  on  Gissing.  All  the  various  literary  soci- 
eties and  fraternities  began  to  "rush"  him,  and  Wells 
invited  him  to  his  house.  On  The  Staircase  created 
a  mild  furore  in  London  and  won  him  the  friendship 
of  Arnold  Bennett.  A  critical  study  of  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson  done  at  this  time  earned  Swinner- 
ton his  first  enemies — not  very  vindictive  ones,  but 
very  angry  ones.  Then  came  the  war  and  an  ill- 
ness so  long  and  serious  that  it  almost  put  an  end 
to  this  career  so  promisingly  begun.  But  Swinnerton 
recovered  and  put  all  the  ardor  of  his  convalescence 
into  The  Chaste  Wife.  It  is  hard  not  to  believe 
that  Stephen  Moore  is  a  self-confession,  so  emotion- 
ally and  unsparingly  is  this  difficult,  morose  and 
tormented  character  drawn,  but  we  must  take  the 
author's  word  for  it  that  it  is  not.     At  all  events. 


[  31  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

the  critical  opinions  expressed  by  Stephen  so  im- 
pressed the  editor  of  the  Manchester  Guardian  that 
he  immediately  wrote  to  Swinnerton  asking  him  to 
do  literary  work  for  this  paper. 

Nocturne  was  written  in  a  period  of  the  greatest 
domestic  stress,  illness,  anxiety  and  loneliness.  So 
great  was  the  author's  preoccupation  that  he  had, 
as  he  says,  no  feeling  but  shame  for  the  work  he 
was  so  hurriedly  producing.  When,  however,  after 
its  completion,  his  own  publisher  said  "it's  a  master- 
piece," and  Arnold  Bennett  wrote,  "A  slight  work, 
but  just  about  perfect,"  and  encomiums  poured  in 
from  across  the  Atlantic,  and  requests  for  transla- 
tion privileges  from  the  other  side  of  the  channel, 
his  spirits  rose  to  a  height  they  had  achieved  only 
once  before  in  his  life,  and  that  was  on  the  occa- 
sion of  his  twenty-fourth  birthday.  Then  followed 
Shops  and  Houses,  a  study  of  suburban  life,  a  novel 
which  reveals  Swinnerton's  emotional  power  with- 
out sentimentality,  in  the  sympathetic  portrayal  of 
youth  in  conflict  with  family  traditions,  petty  small- 
town gossip  and  social  tyranny  defended  by  age. 

Now  he  has  just  finished  another  book  called 
September.  This  is  a  close  study  of  feminine  psy- 
chology. There  are  four  principal  characters,  a 
man  of  about  fifty,  a  woman  of  thirty-eight,  a 
young  man  of  five  and  twenty,  and  a  girl  of 
twenty-one.  The  emotional  conflict  between  these 
characters,  and  particularly  between  the  two  women, 


[  32  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTOIS 

is  the  theme  of  the  story.  The  tale  is  divided  into 
three  books,  each  bearing  the  name  of  one  of  the 
characters. 

Swinnerton  is  now  editorial  adviser  for  the  firm 
of  Chatto  and  Windus.  He  still  continues  to  write 
literary  criticisms  for  the  Manchester  Guardian  and 
in  spare  moments  is  a  professional  dramatic  critic. 
He  contributes  articles,  short  stories  and  plays  to 
current  English  periodicals.  Thus  it  will  be  seen 
that  his  days  are  very  full.  Some  idea  of  his  power 
of  concentration  may  be  got  from  the  fact  that  Noc- 
turne was  written  in  six  weeks  less  a  fortnight,  in 
which  the  story  could  not  be  made  to  progress  be- 
yond a  scene  on  board  the  yacht;  while  September 
was  written  in  four  months.  Nocturne  has  been 
translated  into  Dutch,  Danish  and  Swedish. 

Of  his  characters  Mr.  Swinnerton  humorously 
comments:  "They  don't  go  down  on  their  knees  to 
me  or  interpose  their  own  wills  in  any  matter  af- 
fecting their  own  future.  They  are  real  enough  to 
exist  apart  from  the  things  written  down  for  them, 
but  they  cause  no  sleepless  nights.  Indeed,  I  have 
a  scrupulous  fancy  and  do  the  best  I  can  for  them !" 


[  33  ] 


FRANK   SWINNERTON 

As  Seen  by  an  Editor 

By  GRANT  M.  OVERTON 

Editor,  New  York  Sun  Book  Review 

OF  the  five  novels  of  Frank  Swinnerton  that  I 
have  seen,  all  are  worthy  of  attentive  reading 
by  anyone  who  cares  at  all  for  contemporary  fiction 
in  England  and  America.  The  best  of  the  five — 
they  are,  in  order,  The  Happy  Family,  On  the 
Staircase,  The  Chaste  Wife,  Nocturne,  and  Shops 
and  Houses — is  the  superb  Nocturne;  but  this  book 
is  a  special  feat  and  anyone  acquainted  with  it  is 
likely  to  feel  the  unfairness  of  involving  other  books 
in  comparisons  with  it.  Putting  Nocturne  to  one 
side,  on  a  pedestal  not  ranged  with  the  others,  the 
thing  to  notice  is  the  steady  lifting  into  eminence 
of  Mr.  Swinnerton's  other  books,  in  the  order  in 
which  they  have  reached  us.  Each  is  a  better  per- 
formance than  its  predecessor.  The  superiority  of 
On  the  Staircase  over  The  Happy  Family  may  not 
be  remarkable,  but  The  Chaste  Wife  marks  an  ad- 
vance all  can  see,  while  Shops  and  Houses,  comedy 
though  it  is,  will  give  readers  more  satisfaction  than 
The  Chaste  Wife,  because  it  has  more  contact  with 
the  ordinary  range  of  thought,  feeling  and  observa- 
tion. 

We  talk  about  romanticists  and  realists  loosely, 
but  I  think  it  will  be  found  that  the  business  of  a 


[  35  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

novelist  ordinarily  resolves  itself  into  one  of  two 
broad  tasks.  Either  he  is  going  to  take  the  im- 
probable, the  weird,  the  incredible  and  the  bizarre 
and  so  present  it  to  us  that  we  can  enter  into  it 
with  the  sense  of  "This  did  happen !  I  can  see  how 
he  (or  she)  came  to  act  thus  and  so!" — or  our 
novelist  is  going  to  take  a  piece  of  everydayness  and 
make  us  re-live  it  in  the  sense  of  how  wonderful 
it  all  was.  I  suspect  that  the  novelist  who  essays 
the  first  task  is  the  one  we  call  a  "romanticist"  and 
the  writer  who  tackles  the  second  is  our  "realist." 
Failures  in  the  first  enterprise  are  very  likely  as  fre- 
quent as  in  the  second;  but  they  are  neither  as  con- 
spicuous nor  as  dismal.  This  is  partly  because  our 
imaginations  exert  themselves  to  help  the  romantic 
.writer  while  they  lie  sluggishly  inert  in  the  presence 
of  the  realist,  waiting  for  him  to  rouse  them  from 
heavy  torpor.  Besides,  it  is  only  in  the  last  half 
century,  or  a  little  more,  that  the  realist  (in  the 
sense  I  have  suggested)  has  been  writing.  Many 
Victorian  minds  still  look  upon  him  as  an  experi- 
mentalist engaged  in  a  highly  dubious  enterprise. 

Now  of  course  Mr.  Swinnerton  is  a  realist  in 
these  terms.  But  you  can't  tag  a  writer  as  a  "ro- 
manticist" or  a  "realist"  and  let  it  go  at  that.  Most 
people  would  call  Joseph  Conrad  a  romanticist  and 
be  mainly  right;  but  some  of  the  most  perfect  real- 
ism in  the  world  is  in  his  The  Secret  Agent,  and 
his  Chance  is  full  of  it.     Making  the  extraordinary 

[  36  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

real  and  making  the  commonplace  wonderful  are, 
properly  considered,  complementary  enterprises  of 
the  story-teller.  The  episode  of  Jenny  and  the  sailor 
Keith  Redington  in  Nocturne  is  as  romantic  a  piece 
of  business  as  a  novelist  could  have  to  deal  with. 
The  love  affair  of  Jenny's  sister,  Emmy,  and  the 
utterly  usual  Alf  is  a  particularly  fine  example  of 
the  commonplace  made  wonderful. 

I  think  Nocturne  is  the  most  perfect  work  of 
imaginative  sympathy  I  have  ever  read.  I  used  to 
think,  and  perhaps  I  still  think,  that  Mr.  Conrad's 
Youth  was  the  finest  short  story  in  English;  but 
Youth  is  a  "recapture,"  a  beautiful  moment  of  adora- 
ble recollection.  Nocturne  is  not  a  remembered 
thing  but  an  imagined  thing.  Frank  Swinnerton 
has  seen  a  shopgirl  going  home  at  dusk  on  a  London 
tram  car.  He  has,  in  his  mind,  gone  with  her,  en- 
tered the  house,  looked  upon  the  drudging  Emmy 
and  the  bloated  Pa.  He  has  sat  at  supper  with 
these  three  and  has  found  it  neither  drab  nor  dull. 
Pathos  and  humor  have  disclosed  their  presence  to 
him.  And  he  has  found  just  the  right  words.  He 
is  never  satirical,  never  harsh,  never  sentimental; 
he  is  kindly,  tolerant,  understanding,  just.  He  sees 
beauty  and  romance,  and  he  makes  you  see  them. 
It  is  incredible  to  me  that  anyone  could  read  Noc^ 
turne  and  not  be  moved  and  comforted  by  it.  Well ! 
When  you  have  written  a  book  of  which  that  c^n 
be  said,  the  world  owes  you  something ! 

[  37  ] 


373995 


BOOKS  BY 

FRANK     SWINNERTON 

Description  and  Comment 

SEPTEMBER 

ACCORDING  to  custom  the  Howard  Forsters 
have  come  down  to  their  quiet  country  place 
at  the  beginning  of  summer.  Marian  Forster,  in 
her  late  thirties  still  wonderfully  young,  turns  her 
mind  wearily  to  the  future- Howard,  over  fifty,  over 
fed,  pathetically  foolish  in  the  pursuit  of  the  pleas- 
ures of  youth  has  ceased  to  count;  within  herself 
she  feels  alone,  without  any  special  interest  in  what 
is  to  come.  Then  two  things  happen:  she  meets 
Nigel  Sinclair,  and  Cherry  Mant's  mother  sends 
Cherry  to  visit  Marian.  With  Nigel,  Marian  ex- 
periences a  swift,  delightful  understanding.  She  is 
fascinated  with  trying  to  understand  Cherry,  beauti- 
ful, undeveloped,  strangely  sophisticated,  subtly  per- 
verse, immediately  hostile  to  Marian,  envious  of  her 
mature  calm.  Cherry's  relations  with  Howard, 
Marian's  brief  poignant  happiness  in  Nigel's  love, 
and,  back  in  town  in  September,  her  loss  of  him  to 
Cherry's  triumphant  youth,  make  up  a  tale  of  the 
passionate  conflict  of  two  strongly  contrasted  tem- 
peraments. Nothing  Mr.  Swinnerton  has  done  is 
so  finely  penetrating  as  the  friendship  and  the  con- 
flict between  these  two  women.  Over  and  above 
the    story,    wonderfully    sustained,    informing    the 


[  39  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

whole  so  that  it  becomes  as  one  event,  broods  the 
mood  of  September,  the  autumnal  quality  in 
Marian's  life. 

"It  is  indeed,  a  very  able  book.  With  candor 
and  sincerity  Mr.  Swinnerton  has  applied  his  brain 
to  a  very  difficult  task.  The  development  is  original, 
has  an  unusual  air  of  truth.  Marian  Forster's 
figure  is  finely  logically  outlined.  Her  spoils  from 
the  contest  are  neither  romantic  nor  showy.  Among 
modern  novelists  very  few  would  choose  to  make 
the  fruit  of  the  contest  something  so  quiet.  Few 
would  plan  their  story  so  consistently  vAth  that  end 
in  view.  We  have  read  with  the  conviction  that  we 
are  being  asked  to  attend  to  a  problem  worth  solv- 
ing— a  conviction  so  rare  as  by  itself  to  prove  that 
SEPTEMBER  is  a  novel  of  exceptional  merit." — 
London  Times  Literary  Supplement. 

SHOPS   AND    HOUSES 

WITH  the  indignation  of  youth  against  the  in- 
stinct of  oppression  as  its  theme,  this  is  an 
absorbing  story  of  modern  life  in  an  English  sub- 
urban town,  near  enough  to  London  to  be  the 
home  of  city  men.  It  is  an  exquisitely  humorous 
picture  of  small-town  snobbishness.  A  black-sheep 
of  one  of  the  'first  families'  has  the  effrontery  to 
return  and  set  up  as  a  grocer  in  Beckwith  itself! 
The  solution  here  of  the  exciting  tangle  wrought  is 
through  love.    And  even  Mr.  Swinnerton  has  never 


[  40  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

been  happier  than  in  his  portrayal  of  Louis  Vechan- 
tors,  of  Dorothy  and  of  Veronica — and  of  the  town 
gossip,  Miss  Lampe.  "One  marvels  at  the  extraor- 
dinary acuteness  of  it  all." — London  Bookman. 

"A  bright  study  in  fiction  of  suburban  town  life 
— while  even  the  most  masterly  portrayal  of  small 
town  types  may  leave  the  sympathy  chilled  and  in- 
ert, or  transformed  into  vexed  impatience,  no  such 
fate  could  befall  such  a  rarely  artistic  disclosure  of 
loyalty  and  courage  and  pure  passion  as  Mr.  Swin- 
nerton's  narrative  of  the  triumph  of  true  love  over 
all  obstacles  of  shops  and  houses." — Philadelphia 
North  American. 

"An  exquisitely  humorous  picture  of  small  town 
snobbishness." — San  Francisco   Chronicle. 

"The  book  is,  of  course,  admirably  written.  Mr. 
Swinnerton  knows  a  good  deal  about  human  nature, 
and  he  sets  forth  his  knowledge  with  many  admira- 
ble and  illuminating  little  touches." — New  York 
Times. 

"The  day  after  finishing  Shops  and  Houses  you 
are  likely  to  chuckle  at  every  one  concerned,  your- 
self included.  You  are  equally  likely  to  wait  with 
impatience  for  the  author's  next." — New  York  Sun. 

NOCTURNE 

NOCTURNE   is  only  a   tale  of   the   million 
commonplace    loves    of    a    million    common- 
place people  in  which,   as  humanity's  great  heart 

[  41  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

well  knows,  there  is  little  that  is  either  supremely 
elevating  or  meanly  sordid. 

With  a  few  touches  less  assured,  or  a  single  situ- 
ation vulgarized  or  even  overwrought,  Mr.  Swin- 
nerton's  story  would  have  fallen  in  ruins.  That  he 
has  been  gifted  with  power  to  portray  low  life  with- 
out crassness,  and  artistically  to  suggest  the  pathetic 
yearnings  of  the  lowly  for  joys  of  life  they  can  never 
attain,  nor  even  understand,  is  sufficient  warrant  of 
primacy  in  a  new,  exigent  school  of  fiction  which 
creates  beauty  oiit  of  sheer  fidelity  of  vision,  with 
almost  artless  verity  of  description  and  character- 
ization.— Philadelphia  North  American. 

"This  is  a  book  that  will  not  die.  It  is  perfect, 
authentic,  and  alive.  If  Mr.  Swinnerton  w^re 
never  to  write  another  word,  I  think  he  might  count 
on  this  much  of  his  work  living  when  many  of  the 
more  important  reputations  of  today  may  have 
served  their  purpose  in  the  world  and  become  no 
more  than  fading  names.  Mr.  Swinnerton  has 
written  four  or  five  other  novels  before  this  one, 
but  none  of  them  compares  with  it  in  quality." — 
H.  G.  Wells. 

"Humor  and  romance.  What  could  be  more  ro- 
mantic than  Jenny's  adventure  that  night?  Beauty. 
Not  a  beauty  of  surroundings,  though  Jenny  found 
herself  in  enchanting  surroundings,  but  the  beauty 
of  a  great  love  and  a  sword-sharp  jealousy  guard- 


[42  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

ing  it.  Pathos  in  the  figure  of  Pa  and  the  relation 
of  his  girls  to  him.  And  always  the  right  word. 
Infallibly  the  right  word,  never  satirical,  never 
harsh,  never  sentimental;  kindly,  tolerant,  under- 
standing, just.  If  this  is  what  you  mean  by  realism, 
read  Nocturne  and  be  moved  and  comforted  by  it." 
— New  York  Sun. 

"If  to  write  such  a  book  as  Nocturne  is  not  to 
write  a  great  book,  then  what  is?" — Los  Angeles 
Times. 

"Mr.  Swinnerton  demands  no  alteration  and  sues 
for  no  reforms.  Mentally  he  is  an  aristocrat  if  there 
ever  was  one." — The  New  York  Evening  Post. 

THE    HAPPY    FAMILY 

THE  HAPPY  FAMILY  is  a  realistic  comedy 
of  life  in  London  suburbs.  The  scenes  are 
laid  principally  in  Kentish  Town,  with  excursions 
to  Hampstead,  Highgate,  and  Gospel  Oak;  while 
unusual  pictures  of  the  publishing  trade  form  a 
setting  to  the  highly  important  office-life  of  the 
chief  male  characters.  The  book  shows  these  in- 
dividuals both  at  work  and  at  play,  and  endeavors 
to  suggest  something  of  the  real  life  of  a  class  which 
is  very  rarely  treated  in  fiction.  While  it  is  thus 
a  sympathetic  and  veracious  study,  however,  The 
Happy  Family  is  concerned  with  people  rather  than 
problems;  for  against  the  background  of  suburban 


[  43  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

and  office-life  it  shows  the  courageous  figures  of  a 
girl  and  a  young  man,  both  with  their  own  battles 
to  fight,  emerging  at  length  into  freedom  and  hap- 
piness. Although  parts  of  the  book  are  pathetic, 
and  even  tragic,  its  tone  throughout  is  optimistic; 
and  it  resembles  the  author's  previous  work  in  the 
qualities  of  freshness  and  humor. 

"For  clever,  even  brilliant  analysis  of  character 
and  description  of  unconsidered  details  of  family 
and  social  life,  Mr.  Swinnerton  must  take  high 
rank,  and  these  qualities  give  his  book  much  merit." 
— Boston   Globe. 

"His  style  is  controlled,  ironic,  sometimes  vivid, 
always  unemotional.  The  novel  commands  atten- 
tion as  a  production  of  exceptional  ability  and  in- 
telligence."— New   York   Times. 

"He  displays  the  Amerson  family  with  numerous 
of  its  branches  as  easily  as  another  writer  would 
conduct  a  tete  a  tete.  He  knows  a  hundred  fam- 
ilies like  the  Amersons.  He  knows  the  women  as 
well  as  the  men,  the  typists  as  well  as  the  clerks, 
and  he  reproduces  them  with  honest  art." — Chicago 
Evening  News. 

"People  who  do  not  like  to  read  about  'sordid 
and  commonplace'  people  (that  is,  themselves  and 
their  neighbors)  are  warned  to  eschew  Mr.  Swin- 
nerton's  book,  and  also  Balzac  and  some  other  men 


[  44] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

of  reputed  talent.  But  those  of  firmer  vision  and 
more  flexible  sympathy  will  find  in  The  Happy 
Family  some  very  great  qualities,  candor,  sanity, 
right-thinking,  and  fundamental  humor." — Boston 
Herald. 

THE    CHASTE   WIFE 

]\  CARRIAGE  or  happiness  —  or  both!  Mr. 
-*-^-*-  Swinnerton,  whose  frank  realism  has  often 
been  compared  to  that  of  Gissing,  finds  the  secret 
in  a  single  word:  Truth.  Priscilla  Evandene  was 
happy,  though  Stephen  earned  a  small  pittance. 
Love,  and  utter  confidence,  kept  her  happy.  But 
Stephen  had  to  have  his  secret,  as  so  many  men  do. 
And  when  Priscilla's  confidence  deserted  her,  love 
threatened  to  go,  too!  The  whole  perplexing  prob- 
lem of  marital  felicity  is  stripped  of  its  wrappings 
in  this  tale  of  love's  triumph  over  a  man's  mistaken 
idea  of  "kindness  to  his  wife." 

"It  is  quite  unlike  modern  novels  in  that  it  is 
fine  and  brave  and  big.  Mr.  Swinnerton  is  to  be 
congratulated  on  having  written  a  novel  that  is 
something  more  than  just  good,  and  that  should 
outlast  the  'season.'  " — Chicago  Evening  Post. 

"The  Chaste  Wife  is  a  story  of  marriage  written 
with  sobriety  and  keen  insight.  .  .  .  Character  is 
cleanly  drawn  and  sanely  developed  and  there  is  no 
fumbling  in  this  story." — Boston  Herald. 

"Frank   Swinnerton's    The   Chaste   Wife   is   the 
[  45  ] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

story  of  a  poor  book  reviewer  so  foolhardy  as  to  get 
married." — The  Globe. 

"The  Chaste  Wife  is  admirably  conceived  and 
finished.  Through  the  window  the  author  throws 
open  for  us  we  look  in  upon  the  lives  and  thoughts 
of  a  group  of  people,  all  real,  and  most  of  them 
likable,  whom  we  watch  with  interest,  and  of  whose 
further  experiences,  after  the  last  chapter  is  reached 
and  the  window  closed,  we  would  like  to  be  told." 
— New  York  Times. 

"The  Chaste  Wife  will  widen  Frank  S winner- 
ton's  public;  it  is  written,  moreover,  with  sparkle 
and  polish  and  suggests  that  the  author  really  loves 
his  work." — Chicago  Herald. 

"Reading  Mr.  Swinnerton's  story  is  like  coming 
into  the  sunshine  and  fresh  air  after  a  long,  stifling 
period  in  a  dark,  poorly  ventilated  building.  The 
delicate  accuracy  with  which  he  distinguishes  his 
characters  is  done  so  easily  that  we  have  no  imme- 
diate thought  of  how  high  a  degree  of  art  is  re- 
quired for  such  perfection  of  outline." — Boston 
Evening  Transcript. 

ON    THE    STAIRCASE 

YOU  do  not  meet  life  singly,  as  an  individual, 
no  matter  what  the  ordinary  novels  say! 
The  unit  of  life  is  the  family.    The  family's  per- 
sonality determines  each  member. 


[46] 


FRANK  SWINNERTON 

Frank  Swinnerton  is  one  of  the  few  writers  who 
realize  that  fact.  He  writes  with  cynical  humor, 
genial  S5'mpathy,  distinguished  realism.  He  here 
chronicles  two  families,  a  cramped  menage,  and  a 
well-rounded,  cheerful  household  —  gay  father,  a 
talkative  mother,  a  girl  who  works,  and  her  brother, 
who  teases,  and  her  suitors,  who  yearn. 

Delightful  is  the  incidental  romance  of  Susan, 
that  motherly  young  person  who  expected  to  be  an 
old  maid,  but  amazedly  found  herself  the  center  of 
an  idyll. 

"Its  narrative  comes  to  close  grips  with  life." — 
New  York  Evening  Post. 

"In  defiance  of  all  claims  of  the  individualists, 
Mr.  Swinnerton  hymns  the  family.  On  the  Stair- 
case is  the  picture  of  two  groups,  Barbara  Gretton 
and  her  household,  gay,  quarrelsome,  affectionate, 
independent,  and  Adrian  Velancourt  and  Cissie,  his 
wife  —  inevitable  tragedy  is  here  and  Swinnerton 
handles  it  with  sureness  and  delicacy — but  he  is  not 
afraid  of  amusing  observation  and  bright  humor 
and  good  cheer. "-^iV^w;  York  Times. 

"On  the  Staircase  is  an  entrancing  novel  of  the 
experiences,  adventures,  emotions  of  a  little  group 
of  ordinary  young  people.  ...  It  is  a  living 
story." — The  Independent. 

"On  the  Staircase  is  a  delightful  novel.  The 
praise  it  has  received  from  London  critics  is  de- 
served."— Boston  Herald. 

[47   ] 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 

COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


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LOSANGELBB 

LIBRART 


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PAMPHLET  BINDER 

Syracuse, 
Stockton,! 


UCLA-College  Library 

PR  6037  S97Z6 


L  005  659  272  8 


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A    001  193  536    e 


